The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) is a two-year institution focusing on sequential art, specifically comics and graphic novels.

"[4] The Center for Cartoon Studies was founded by cartoonist James Sturm and professor Michelle Ollie[1] in 2004, with its first class of 18 students in the Fall of 2005.

[5] The first class of students were accepted less on the quality of their drawing and more on their critical thinking skills, literary merit, storytelling abilities, and curiosity.

[8] All the main operational and educational facilities of the Center for Cartoon Studies are located in the former Colodny’s Surprise Department Store Building.

This building will become the main structure for the Center for Cartoon Studies and includes classrooms, faculty offices and lounges, and the Schulz Library.

It also includes studio space for the Inky Solomon Center, a grant-program geared towards CCS alumni, their comics, and community outreach.

[10] Past visiting faculty have included Alison Bechdel, Ed Brubaker, Ivan Brunetti, James Kochalka, Jason Lutes, Scott McCloud, Seth, Art Spiegelman, Craig Thompson, and Chris Ware.

A senior thesis is required at the Center, which usually involves the creation of a full-scale graphic novel[10] or a full year's worth of work.

The publishing imprint "The Center for Cartoon Studies Presents", under the direction of series editor James Sturm, has published a number of young adult graphic novels on historical subjects: A subset of The Center for Cartoon Studies Presents is Adventures in Cartooning, a series of elementary school-level how-to books on making comics, by James Sturm,[18] Andrew Arnold, and Alexis Frederick-Frost, and published by First Second Books: In addition to Sturm, Stephen R. Bissette, Jason Lutes and Alec Longstreth are permanent faculty.